


You Don't Say

by AstridContraMundum



Series: Ere I turn away . . . [2]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: A concert date goes awry and it takes Morse four years to give it another go, Allusion to/depiction of suicide (opens during the suicide scene in Confection), Canticle, Episode: s06e03 Confection, Introspection, M/M, Pylon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 02:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21171863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: If either of them was ever going to say a word, it would have to be he, Morse, who said it.Even though it was a task for which he was thoroughly ill-equipped.But now, there's no turning back. Because now, he's already knocked on Max's door.





	You Don't Say

Morse hadn’t meant for those three words to fall from his mouth in quite that way.

But they had, all the same.

And for a moment, it seemed as if the relation in which he stood to Max had somehow tilted on its axis.

They were standing in the doorway of a white and light-filled bathroom, looking down upon the body of Rufus Barrow, a young man who had taken his life while lying in a low, white porcelain tub, slowly bleeding out into the warm water while listening to Mahler.

It was a scene that would have once caused Morse to turn away. But now, he found—despite Max’s too vivid remarks about the scent of sucrose in the air—that he could manage to look upon it.

Now .... it was all too easy.

Morse wasn’t sure why the sight of Barrow’s body, lying in a white tub stained red, filled with water and blood, should have struck such a chord with him. Perhaps it was because the rooms—with their sloping white walls, high windows and scatter of books and records—were all too familiar, rooms much like the ones he had once inhabited, when he was at Lonsdale.

Perhaps, too, it was because he did share a chord of connection to the postgrad, however faint.

Morse had not put on a record and lay down in a tub of warm water, resolving to end his life, it was true—but he _had_ put on a record and lay down on a carpet, resolving not to save it—doing nothing day after day but to stare up at the ceiling as the turntable revolved, circling the engagement ring Susan had returned to him in his deft fingers, as if the smooth band with its small rough diamond was already the only tangible thing remaining of his one-time life.

Tony had come in from time to time, to tell him to “at least get off the floor, for god’s sake,” and even Bruce, once, had towered over him, prodding him with the toe of his shoe.

“Aren’t you coming to tutorial?”

“No,” Morse replied.

He didn’t go to tutorial. He didn’t do anything, really. He simply lay there, scarcely moving from the spot, until it seemed he might grow onto Tony’s Persian carpet much like moss onto a felled log. 

Until the day he slowly got up, and wandered down to the recruitment center.

For weeks after Susan broke it off with him, he had scarcely wanted to look at himself in the mirror, scarcely wanted to see that disaster of a man looking back at him.

What was he, exactly, but a failed fiancé? A failed student?

But then, miraculously, within the first few weeks of enlisting, he was remade into an entirely different person: with his hair cropped shorter than he had formerly worn it, his face seemed more angular, altogether different; in his new, crisp uniform, he was no longer a Greats scholar, but a standard-issue, freshly-minted army private, looking precisely like dozens and even hundreds of other army privates, making it easy for him to disappear, to lose himself in the crowd, to leave all memories of Oxford far behind him.

So it was true he had not cut himself off with the degree of unforgiving finality that Rufus Barrow had, but he had cut himself off, just the same.

And now in Barrow’s rooms, it was as if he could sense the shell of his former self, of Pagan there, somewhere about the place.

It was as if, after all this time, he was right back to square one.

Which in many ways, he was.

It was with that degree of understanding that Morse took in one last look at the scene before him.

“No solipsistic impulse, knowingly overlooked,” he mused.

Max, standing just an inch beside him, seemed to startle at that, and then answered with a voice full of gentle rebuke.

“People do despair, Morse,” he said.

And then Morse said them, those three words. Said them as if he knew that aphorism all too well, down to his bones.

“Mmmmmm,” he said.

“You don’t say.”

Morse did not look at Max as he spoke, but he felt him tense beside him, felt a wave of concern that was almost palpable.

When Morse did turn to Max, he saw something new there: an odd tenderness that lit the calm and impassive face behind the neat glasses, making him look younger somehow, softer, than Morse had ever seen him.

Whereas Morse himself felt as worn as old paper, as tired as the long turning of the world.

It gave Morse pause to see Max so off his guard. It seemed, then, that everything between them had flipped. As if Morse had somehow leapt ahead of Max, as if had grown older than Max somehow.

Although, of course, such a thing was impossible.

They had come far, so far, from that sunlit afternoon, from the hill upon which they first had met, beside the body of another dead student, another apparent suicide. So far from that time when Morse had been gawky and naïve, full of all of the self-righteous certainty of youth, from the time when Max had looked upon him as a man looks upon a ridiculous boy—with a steady and bemused eye.

Morse wasn’t sure if he could pinpoint when their relationship began to change—he supposed Max would know, if ever he dared to ask him. He supposed it must have been whenever it was that Max decided that he was not entirely a fool, after all.

Well. Not entirely.

Sometime during those first months at Cowley, Morse came to look for Max at a crime scene, to seek him out, rather than to stand away from him.

He was always there, Max, in the foreground or in the background, a presence as steady as music, sounding with subtle notes that he learned well, as their friendship—such as it was—grew: a look of understanding, a helpful aside, a private joke that was sometimes the only true human connection that Morse might make for the day.

Or for two.

Until it had grown into this, this easy way in which they fell into small talk, even after turning their backs upon a scene of blood and sorrow.

_About suffering, they were never wrong, the old masters . . . ._

After Morse and Max left the postgrad’s rooms, they walked along together, side by side, Morse’s lopping gait matching Max’s efficient one, step for step, down the pavement cutting through the green, through a broad courtyard of ancient stone walls and improbable gothic windows.

“It had gone, the flat. The one o’clock took it,” Morse said.

“Oh, bad luck,” Max said, dropping, as always, no judgment on the fact that Morse had now passed thirty and had gone nowhere, on the fact that he was right back to living in the section house, just as he had been when they had first met, when he was on detachment from Carshall Newton, four years ago.

“I’ve been thinking of looking a little further out,” Morse said.

“How far is further?” Max answered.

Morse wondered why Max would ask him such a thing. Did it matter, really? They had each visited the other at their lodgings only once in the long years that they had known one another: Max when he had come out to Whitney, to inquire about his stitches, Morse when he had gone out to Max’s home, to inquire about an autopsy report.

“There’s a place in Chington Green to let. Looks quite nice,” Morse replied.

“Well. Best of luck with it,” Max said.

They said their farewells, and then parted ways as they came out to the street.

But as Morse was walking away, he felt it—that odd sensation of being watched.

He turned and looked, to see Max, further down on the pavement, studying his retreating form thoughtfully.

One would think that, being caught out, Max might turn away. But instead, he remained just where he was, as if he had every right to scrutinize him so.

Morse paused and looked at him, waiting for Max to have the discretion to turn around, to head off on his way. But he didn’t. He didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. He only smiled softly and nodded to him, as if to give him a final “take care now.”

In the end, it was Morse who scowled, Morse who spun on his heel first, Morse who slouched off down the pavement.

He knew, he could feel it, that Max was thinking of what he had just said up in Barrow’s rooms.

The last thing he wanted from Max was pity.

He had rather suspected he had had Max’s pity before.

*********

Perhaps the scene had affected Morse more than he had allowed himself to realize, because later that night, at the end of his shift, as Morse drove back to the section house, his thoughts were full of the past, full of regrets, full of a memory of another night, long ago, when Max had driven him back to the section house at Whitney, after a concert.

It was Max who had come to see him in his exile there, Max who had convinced him to get out and about, to go to choir practice, to sing at the concert. 

“Who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once,” Max had said.

But that proved to be not all together true.

The concert did nothing to ease Morse’s loneliness; rather, it seemed to exacerbate it, as if giving him ample opportunity to see just what it was he had been missing—the couples whispering in one another’s ears with soft smiles, the calls filled with laughter, the old friends standing in groups under the fairy lights.

Max and Morse were at the bar, ordering a final drink, and suddenly, Morse felt he would give anything to spin out his time with Max, anything to avoid having to go back to Whitney.

It was foolish, how much he did not want to go back to the section house, how much he did not want to be alone.

More foolish still, what he did next.

When the bartender handed them their tumblers of Scotch, Morse reached up and took both of them, and, as he turned to pass Max his glass, he reached his hand slightly more forward than was necessary, resting his fingertips on Max’s knuckles, brushing the back of them as he drew his hand away, with a pressure he hoped might be gentle enough to be discarded, if Max wanted, but also deliberate enough to be understood.

Morse didn’t know what he wanted, exactly.

Only that he wanted something.

And that whatever that might be, it would be up to Max to offer it.

Morse could hardly invite Max back to the section house, after all. But Max, he knew, must certainly have a house of his own. Perhaps Max might invite him back for a drink. Or they could have coffee. Or they could listen to records. Perhaps, they might simply sit on the couch, side by side, and say nothing, each taking solace and reassurance from the warmth of a body nestled next to his own. Or they could turn and let their mouths meet, exchange soft kisses sharp with the tang of Scotch. Or make love on the carpet in his living room. Or Max could take him to bed.

Or . . . Anything.

Anything Max wanted, really.

If only he’d let him stay with him just a bit longer.

Morse tried to keep his face steady as his fingertips brushed Max’s square and capable hand, but it still must have shone in his eyes, some tinge of desperation, that need that—perversely enough— seemed to set people off of him so.

Morse was sure that Max must have noted it, must have seen, it, because he simply smiled at him, a smile that was a bit _too_ understanding, a smile that was even a bit paternal—which was annoying, actually, considering that, while it was true that Max, as a doctor, might be termed to be further ahead on that ladder of adulthood than DC Morse, that was only because Morse had stumbled around so. He was certain that it could be only a handful of years that separated them.

It was a gentle thing, that smile—a kind _no,_ but a _no_ just the same.

So Morse drew his hand back, flustered, and pulled at his ear, suddenly sick with the fear that Max might pity him.

And then Max drove him home. 

The trouble was, Morse did not know quite what Max meant by that smile. Where exactly did it fall, as a note on the scale?

Did it mean no, not ever? That he had no thought of Morse beyond that of a professional acquaintance?

Or did he simply feel that Morse was at a moment of weakness, and that he did not want to ask anything from him while he was in such as state?

Max was always difficult to read—on the surface, his face was as calm as a woodland pond, smooth and pleasant and easy, but, in certain lights, a thousand thoughts seemed to play there, flickers brought on by a breeze to subtle to trace.

Surely, though, Max must have known that once Morse had ventured and been turned down, he would never be able to venture forth again. Surely, he must have known that if they were to return to that place, to that note in the song, it would have to be Max to set the turntable spinning.

But Max never did.

He never said a word.

But while Max showed no further interest in him, nor did treat him any differently than he had before that night, either.

He was not, then, repulsed, by his subtle—or perhaps, not so subtle—advances. He returned to their same easy manner, as if nothing had happened.

_“Anything suspicious?”_

_“Only you, Morse.”_

And then Max would give him that broad and self-satisfied smile, tilting up his head with a smug and amused look that made Morse wanted to kiss it away.

But instead Morse looked down at his shoes and rumpled the waves at his nape.

After that, it was like a slow unwinding. Instead of seeking him out, Morse learned to keep a prudent distance between them—easy enough to do, considering he had his fear of corpses as a ready-made excuse.

Until the day in the morgue, when they were discussing the Barry Finch case, when Max suddenly came up behind him, wrapping a silk sash around his throat.

For a moment, Morse stood stunned, not only by Max’s action, but his sudden proximity: His breath warm on the sensitive skin by his ear, the strong forearms that Morse had often allowed his eyes to trace over from afar, now pressed firmly, solidly against his back.

He was afraid for a moment to turn around, certain that Max must notice the daze of surprise in his eyes, the flush of heat he felt burn his face.

But if he did, he didn’t say.

Or perhaps it was that Morse wanted too much. Perhaps Max didn’t need to say a word.

Because sometimes, his mere presence spoke volumes.

Because Max was there, even as Morse stood by the cordon in windblown fields, straight against the glare of the sun in his stiff blue uniform, hiding behind the mustache he had allowed to grow out because, once again, for the second time in his life, he found that he could not bear to look at himself in the mirror. Not with George Fancy dead and with Inspector Thursday drifting.

What was he, exactly, but a failed mentor? A failed protégé?

Max was there, even as Morse—already living in an isolation as thick as a hardened crust that he sometimes felt might choke him, an isolation that he didn’t possibly think could grow any worse— suffered yet another blow—on the day that Thursday had walked up to him and looked right though him, turning instead to DCI Box.

“A former colleague, from Cowley,” he said. 

And the world was spinning. And the shared pints and confidences, and all of the nights sitting on stake-out in the black Jag, and all of the mornings he stood waiting for him in his dining room smelling of warm toast and tea, and the winter afternoon that Thursday had come up to Lincolnshire, to see him after his father’s death, and the summer afternoon that he had held him on the floor of Maplewick Hall, as his mind was burning and exploding and dying … and all of it, was suddenly nothing.

He wasn’t a second son, or a protégé, or a bagman, or even a friend. Only a colleague. A former one. From Cowley.

Max had been there, watching the scene. And Morse was given to think that Max, at least, had understood the enormity of what had just transpired.

But Morse could do nothing, but to walk off, alone, off through the high grass, and what Max might have thought of it all, he didn’t say.

But nor did Max seem as surprised as he might, either, when Morse turned up later that day, unannounced, at his front door.

He came for information about Ann Kirby, but what he found—as Max set a seed cake with a flourish of care on the table between them—was something surprising, something he had never felt quite before.

Well. Not since he was twelve. 

It wasn’t happiness, he felt, sitting in Max’s garden, but something more than happiness.

It was something more like . . . home.

And that was because Max was there. Max and more than Max. Because here, Max was his truest self; he was at his ease, in his rightful place, leaning back in a white iron-wrought chair, the prince of his wayward kingdom, with the evening sun falling far more softly on his face, setting it in a far more faithful light than the white glare and shadow of the mortuary ever could.

Max murmured some excuse as to the garden’s untidiness, but Morse suspected that Max rather liked it so. It was life, and life in abundance, the browsy wildflowers and the confusion of circling vines, hung heavy with flowers, allowed to live out their natural course, to fall to seed, to feed the tender birds and seeking mice, to sink into the earth and begin life anew.

“It’s nice,” was all that Morse could manage, being almost drunk with beauty—the beauty found in a world of green and sunlight, and that found in the eyes that looked upon him with acceptance and—perhaps— even fondness, two things that Morse had felt the lack of so keenly, all of the past few months. All of the past few years.

“I’m currently fighting a war of attrition with the greenfly over the tea roses,” Max said. “Not very successfully, I must say, but yes. As a spot, I’m rather fond.”

Max leaned back then and rested his hands lightly across the front of his jumper vest, as soft as the garden itself. Morse only smiled and nodded, to show that he understood. There could be no refuge more perfect than this, no better haven from Max’s other world, the world in which he spent so many hours of his day up to his elbows in death.

“Well,” Max said, when he realized that Morse had nothing forthcoming.

“Something has to be lovely, doesn’t it?”

Morse smiled again, this time, a little sadly.

He was sorry, now, that he had brought his questions of a young girl found dead with flowers in her hair here, into Max’s sanctuary.

But he was also not sorry. He was glad he had at least once seen the place.

Sitting in the patio chair, he felt that he, too, belonged to the garden, just as much as the tea roses or the sparrows, that he, too, belonged here, under Max’s gentle and haphazard care.

It was strange, then, that even as the sun was falling, leaving that golden light that comes only at the end of the day, a light as heavy as sleep upon the leaves, that a snatch of a poem quite different— one about the sunrise—should leap into his head.

It was a small thing, by Fet, that he had learned when he was in Signals, studying Russian.

_I have come to you to greet you, to tell you the sun has risen, that its fiery light is quivering over the leaves . . . ._

He had never thought he would find a world so full of light in a man for whom there was such an apt word rooted in Anglo-Saxon.

Morse smiled to himself at the thought of it, but then he frowned, because remembering the first day they had met made him think of something else, too.

First impressions may be later discarded.

But first impressions also sometimes last.

Morse realized then that, whenever Max looked at him, he didn’t see the mustache or the dark suits or the new austerity in his gaze. He saw him still perhaps as he was on that sunlit afternoon, fresh-faced and lanky and tousle-haired, reluctant to come near to a corpse, at once boyishly imperious and uncertain. Insulting him in one moment and asking him for a lift in the next. 

That’s who he was still, to Max.

And so he would never say.

Whether it was out of some point of honor or propriety—or owing to a concern that Morse’s career on the force might weather any such rumors that may or may not circulate about them far worse than his own, Max, as proper as an old Roman, would never say the first word. 

He would never want to feel as if he was—and here Morse could barely suppress a snort— “pressing his advantage,” or “leading him astray.”

As if that bridge hadn’t been cut long ago.

If either of them was ever going to say a word, it would have to be he, Morse, who said it.

Even though it was a task for which he was thoroughly ill-equipped.

****

Morse realized, then, that he had reached the section house. He sat for a moment, the engine idling, looking at the dull brick walls with their rows of institutional windows, and then, rather than putting the car into park, he set it into reverse, and pulled away.

He kept on driving. And thinking. And thinking and driving. And then somehow, he found that his course had brought him directly to Max’s door.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world, then, to swing his legs out of the car and to go up to that door, now familiar, and knock.

The light was on in the front window, a cheery and welcoming glow that he felt must be meant just for him. He knocked three times on the door.

And . . .

And what in the hell was he doing?

Morse had no idea what excuse to give for having come here at this hour. He didn’t know what hour it was, even. He had no plans as to what to say.

Once he had knocked, though, it was too late to turn around, unless he wanted to dart away, like a schoolboy playing pranks, unless he wanted to risk getting caught out hiding in the bushes or running back to the car like a child.

And so he stood and waited.

There was the sound of the turn of the knob, and Morse’s heart began to race beneath the dark trim shirt and jacket, and then he realized: Max was right, Max had been right about him all along.

The mustache, the suit—they were all lies, they were only a disguise; the truth was, he might as well have been on that hill again, with a face full of summer freckles, tousle-haired and wearing a rumpled white shirt, one slightly too large to tuck in properly. He was young and awkward and gawky and he didn’t know what to say, but soon he would have to say something.

But there was nothing there, nothing at all in his head.

The only thing that he could grasp onto were the last lines of that little poem, the one he had first thought of in Max’s garden.

_I don’t know myself, what song I am going to sing_

_Only that a song is growing._

And then Max was opening the door.

**Author's Note:**

> I was really taken by Max's expression during that scene in Confection, and I wanted to try to write them again, but wow they are a challenge. Oh, yikes. 
> 
> The next piece, "Love and Fishing," will turn to Max's POV, and much awkwardness will ensue.... so I might be back on my steadier ground. :D (I hope!) 
> 
> Thanks for giving this a try!


End file.
